If there was laughter at the Academy – and not just the hollow, knowing, cynical kind – it was because of Elsie. 

Danvers was adamant that, as his sister, she didn't have to work, but somehow she found ways to weave herself into the daily life of the place until she was indispensable. She waded through the steam and condensation on laundry day as though she was Stanley searching for Dr Livingstone in the dripping depths of the Congo, and took enormous pleasure in beating the stains out of the sheets in their washtub. Her little, pointed mouth was always in motion, with smiles, pouts, and chatter.

It was Candlemas Day – a sunny Candlemas Day, which, according to popular wisdom, would presage snow on May Day – and Miss Ginniver's wedding was due to take place that afternoon. Somehow, it had become a symbol of recovery for all of them. Without really talking about it, they had decked out the Academy and its gardens as though it was already spring. They put up a maypole in the frosty fields, and sewed little pink rosebuds into the bridesmaid's dresses.

It was something of a holiday, even though the entire household was busy making garlands and preparing cakes and pastries. The slave-girls managed to find time for gossip and games. 

They had already played the parlour-game of trying to take sixpence off the top of a mound of flour using only your teeth. The resultant smudges on Elsie's face were now the focus of Danvers's attention. He was trying to brush the flour out of her hair and beat it out of her skirts, but was only succeeding in smearing it over a wider area. And her inability to stand still didn't help matters. The kitchen tables were laden with jellies, ices, baked apples and bread pudding, and Elsie – who couldn't see them – was busy savouring the smells, and trying to prod the jellies.

Behind him, the other girls kneaded dough and slid pans in and out of the oven, and generally made all the sounds of delicious industry. Unfortunately, this was not loud enough to drown out their chatter.

"It's the wedding night that bothers me," Miss Mary was saying, as she dusted nutmeg over the bread pudding. "Could be fractious if Ginny gets 'er way."

"What makes you say that?" said Miss Katherine.

"Haven't you 'eard the speech Jack gives to any man brave enough to marry into our little family? One of 'is biggest rules is no 'anky-panky on the wedding night. They're only allowed to cuddle. And you know Ginny – she just wants to get back to normal as fast as possible. She wants to do everything an ordinary woman would do on 'er wedding-night. And if that includes a clumsy fumble with some oaf 'oo don't know what 'e's doing, so be it."

Danvers, who'd had some presentiment of where this conversation was going, managed to cough over the last sentence and pretend that it was because of the clouds of flour.

"If I were her, I'd take him up on a quiet night's cuddling," said Katherine. "I know from when I went back to my husband, you get a man on top of you – doesn't matter who he is – and you can't stop thinking--"

This time, Danvers coughed more vigorously, and Katherine broke off, looking guiltily at Elsie. For all their worldly experience, they had no desire to disillusion Elsie. Maybe they needed her innocence – or needed to believe that there was still such a thing in the world.

"Perhaps the puddings are ready to be sent up to the marquee, Miss Katherine?" he said meaningfully.

Katherine gave him a surly look, but she took up the hot dish with a tea-towel and left the kitchens. The other girls followed, and in the ensuing silence, Danvers listened to Elsie humming and counted his own anxious heartbeats. He wondered how much she had heard.

They had never talked about what had happened to the slave-girls. As far as he knew, she was unaware of it. How would he tell her that they'd been molested and tortured? What would happen if he was obliged to explain to her about evil?

Well, in theory, nothing would happen, because he didn't believe in evil. But he didn't believe in evil because of Elsie. Bitterness had been encroaching on him from all sides, but Elsie had chased it away like a child scattering pigeons. Now he was terrified that, if she understood the pigeons, she would join up with them, and they would rain terrible vengeance on his head for eluding them so long.

It was probably a silly fear. It certainly was, if you thought about it in terms of pigeons. And yet the meanest of earth's creatures could be terrifying if they had Elsie on their side.

For a few moments, he thought he'd got away with it. But just as he was attempting to sidle off, Elsie turned from her inspection of one of the jellies, and said, "Tell me, Mr Danvers, what exactly was done to these women?"

Danvers stopped dead, his heart slipping down to the level of his knees. "Ah. Um. Well, in essence, they were taken away from their homes and families and forced to work very hard underground." He paused, aware that this wasn't enough, even for a sanitized version of events. "And – uh – they weren't treated very nicely."

"Oh, I know that," said Elsie, waving a flour-caked hand. "I know they were whipped if they didn't work hard enough. But there's some extra torture, something they don't talk about – or, anyway, they don't talk about it in front of me."

"No – well," Danvers mumbled. "It's hardly the sort of thing you mention in front of innocent young women."

"But you'll tell me what it is," she said warmly. "You've always helped me understand things."

"Those were usually things which were conducive to your peace of mind. You don't know how much I wish I didn't know..."

"But I have to know," said Elsie. "These are my people."

Danvers hung his head. She usually got her way – and he was usually quite happy to give it to her – but alluding to her mystic nature, to her link with every other demon or part-demon, which excluded him utterly, was a low blow.

"Very well," he said, plunging his hands into his pockets in gloomy anticipation. "I expect you recall the article I read you from the Encyclopaedia Britannica – the one entitled 'Animal Reproduction'?"

"Oh yes," Elsie giggled. "How could I forget?"

"How indeed?" said Danvers. The article had been embarrassing enough in its own right, but some previous – no doubt juvenile – reader had underlined the ruder passages, and added distinctly unscientific diagrams in the margins. Elsie couldn't see them, of course, but she demanded an explanation every time he sighed and spluttered, and he couldn't lie to her. 

"So you will remember that there's an act," he resumed, "rather like kissing, which humans and other animals engage in when they've – when they've found a mate?"

"Yes," said Elsie, her mouth straight and solemn. "The girls talk about that all the time."

"Humph," said Danvers, and left it at that, because he couldn't find it in his heart to criticize them. "Well, some men – very bad men – will force women to engage in this act when they don't want to."

"And it hurts them?"

"Yes, but it's more than that." Danvers paused wretchedly. "It's violation... humiliation... I'm not really the best person to explain..."

Elsie raised a floury hand to her lips. "It's worse than hurting them?"

"I think so," said Danvers, his face stoically red. "But, as I say, it hurts them as well..."

"But I thought this act was for people who loved each other? You said when a man and a woman love each other--"

"I was... oversimplifying. It can be done without love."

"With contempt, it seems to me!"

Danvers said nothing.

"What's it like, then?" she went on, her forehead furrowed almost angrily. "To want someone but hold them in contempt?"

"I'm happy to say I've no idea," he said, fidgeting with his cuffs. "But I imagine it's rather frightening. To think yourself a beast, I mean. And so it's probably tempting to take it out on the woman who has made you feel frightened. That doesn't excuse it – nothing could – but I believe there's always a story behind every act of cruelty – something in the bad person's past which doesn't excuse him precisely, but should mitigate our anger."

He wasn't sure Elsie was listening. There was suddenly colour in her cheeks, underneath the smudges of flour.

"Ellini said to me – when I was still a doll – that there is such a thing as love in the world, but it isn't when men say they'd die for you, and worship your body like a graven image."

"Yes," said Danvers, who felt an inexplicable need to defend his sex, much as his sex had been disappointing him lately. "But, in fairness, she was basing her assessment of male affection on Jack Cade..."

"What had he done?"

"He promised to marry her and then kissed another woman," said Danvers. He did not add: 'A woman whom he held in contempt, but who there was no need to force into compliance.'

"Is that something you wouldn't have done?" said Elsie, folding her arms.

Danvers stared at her. His immediate impulse was to bristle at the accusation – but this was Elsie, and every question Elsie asked him had to be carefully considered. Something told him there was more than her feelings at stake if he gave her misinformation.

Besides, it wasn't the simple matter he'd assumed it was, now that he came to think about it. He knew what it was to want someone, and he knew Mrs Darwin was a very attractive woman. It might even have occurred to him to want her himself, only she was his superior in birth and education, so there had always been too much respect in the way.

But the way Jack had kissed her – as though he wanted to consume her, and wouldn't have been at all sorry if her entire being had been reduced to merely a lingering taste in his mouth – was beastly. He didn't want to be a beast.

"No," he said finally. "I can't imagine any circumstances in which I would have done that."

The furrows on Elsie's forehead smoothed out in relief. "And have you ever done what the gargoyles did?"

This time, he had to bristle at the accusation. "I'm rather hurt that you have to ask!"

"No, I mean... without contempt."

He looked at her for a long moment. But it was no good – he had to answer her.

"I have not." 

"You're angry with me," said Elsie, the frown reappearing above her blindfold. "Was that a rude question?"

"There are no rude questions between us."

"Thank you," she said. "That's what I thought. In that case, can I ask why you're angry?"

He sighed miserably. Somehow – unconscionably – this was worse than explaining about what had been done to the slave-girls. "Well, it's a curious thing... Even though it's generally acknowledged that an unmarried man shouldn't do that sort of thing, the fact that he hasn't is still not the sort of thing he admits to."

"Why not?"

Danvers thought about it. "Because... because a man is expected to be experienced."

"Why?"

"Because he is expected to look after people."

"And you can't do that from a state of innocence?"

"Perhaps not."

"Well," she said, dusting the flour off her hands. "Now that I understand what happened to the girls, we can do something about it. I'll find the demons and punish them. I could even punish Jack, only--"

"Jack is already being punished more than you could possibly imagine," said Danvers. He didn't doubt this. He hated Jack at times. He still blamed him for Miss Syal's death, because it was difficult for a gentle soul like Danvers to understand how having your memories removed made it understandable to stab an unarmed woman in the chest – but he couldn't deny that the man was suffering. The punishment had been proportional to the crime.

"Just the gargoyles then," said Elsie. She looked relieved, which immediately annoyed him. She liked Jack – naturally enough, since she thought of him as her father – but it still made Danvers uneasy.

"I've realized," she went on, with the smug, excitable air of a child who'd perfected her latest lesson, "that I can open a door into the demon realms wherever I am. I just have to concentrate on the particular demons I want to see behind it."

"Wha-?" Danvers started, but she didn't wait for him to finish. She was too impatient to show off her new skill.

She leaned forward and made a motion as though she was grasping a door-handle. Then she pulled her arm back, and Danvers felt a blast of heat, as though she had flung open the door of an oven.

What she had really flung open, heavens only knew, but there was suddenly a doorway-shaped opening in the air in front of her, where before there had only been a kitchen counter-top. Most of it was filled by the hulking shape of a gargoyle-demon. Over its shoulder – behind the awkward, charcoal-grey wings – Danvers could make out a lot of black stone, and a ceiling so spangled with gems they looked like stars in a low-hanging sky.

He grabbed Elsie's shoulder and tried to draw her back, but she raised a hand to hush him.

"It's all right. They're under my control." She reached out as if to touch the creature, and then drew her hand back with a grimace. "Poor things, it's the first time they've known control in three hundred years."

There were indeed more of them, lining up one behind the other, as though they were expecting to be led. Danvers hadn't seen them since the days when they had chased Miss Syal over the rooftops, and if they hadn't been so absurdly recognizable – with their snouts and hollow eye-sockets – he would scarcely have known them. They were somehow deflated, ashamed.

"You were right, Mr Danvers," said Elsie, who still looked as though she had a bad taste in her mouth. "There are always stories. I can see them, stretching back behind the poor creatures like a tail. They were males in a society that only allowed freedom and power to females. They tore themselves away from my influence – so that they stayed awake when I was dormant – because they had nothing to lose. At least in sin they could be their own masters – or so they thought. Because they tore themselves away imperfectly. Only one person has ever done it right. Part of their minds remained asleep, and they became half-crazed and easily led. They could only find comfort in tormenting creatures more helpless than themselves. That's still unforgivable – or perhaps not readily forgivable," she added thoughtfully. "It will take a while..."

"Elsie, what are they doing here?" said Danvers, fighting the impulse to drag her bodily from the room.

"Well, it's not enough for justice to be done," she said, shrugging. "Justice has to be seen to be done – specifically by the victims. I need the girls to witness their punishment."

"What sort of punishment?"

But Elsie had obviously sensed his misgivings, because she smiled at him. It was the smile of the joyfully curious blind girl, not the smile of the mother-goddess of the demons. She was his Elsie, even when she was standing imperiously on the threshold of hell.

"Don't you think you've taught me enough to be merciful?" she asked. "Believe it or not, mercy is the rational choice. Retribution would only exacerbate things. We'd end up with one of those revenge tragedies Dr Petrescu was telling us about, where one side lashes out at the other in turn until there's nobody left to retaliate."

Danvers would have agreed with this if he could understand it. Since he couldn't, he was forced to fall back on trust.

It wasn't easy to trust someone you cherished and protected like a beloved child. It wasn't easy to trust someone who only asked questions and never gave answers. But he realized that the sort of questions she asked – and the fact that she asked them at all – were a good indication of her humanity.

She reached out a hand for his and he took it, hoping she wouldn't notice how sweaty he was.

"Now I need you to lead me in a circuit round the grounds," she instructed. "It's all right, the gargoyles will follow. They're as docile as lambs now. They have been ever since I woke up."

She was right. They followed as quietly and obediently as the children who followed the Pied Piper. Except that they didn't seem to be in a trance. They were slumping and dispirited, but there was more awareness in those horrific hollows they had in place of eyes than he had ever seen there before. For the first time in three hundred years perhaps, they were wide awake – fully aware of what they were doing and what was coming.

Danvers led Elsie and the procession of gargoyles out of the kitchens, up the stairs, through the entrance hall, and into the grounds. It felt like the ceremonial progress of a Queen. The smudges of flour on her new blue gown looked like clouds in a summer sky. Danvers fancied he could see them moving, the way the lights on her skin shifted and broke apart and re-formed in different configurations. She was like some elemental queen, wearing the sky, trailing earth and fire behind her.

All the way, he dreaded encountering Jack – or one of the slave-girls – and seeing rage in their eyes. He dreaded their rage more than their horror, although this didn't seem right when he stopped to think about it. Surely it was better for them to be angry than afraid?

But, as it happened, they were neither. As the line of gargoyles emerged out into the grounds – steaming in the daylight, even though it was currently overcast – he saw eyes at the windows, girls pausing in the act of tying flower-garlands or setting out chairs. And they were calm. Wide-eyed, of course – even a little uneasy. Some of them raised their hands to their mouths, but nobody cried out. Was this Elsie's influence? Was her slow, measured tread calming the situation?

Danvers forced himself to walk slowly, in case this was true. After a few minutes, he even stopped dreading the eruption of screams himself. 

He led Elsie around the gates, and through the ivy-covered walkways and outhouses at the back of the building. Every few yards, he noticed, a gargoyle at the back of the line broke off from the procession and squatted down on its haunches. They were forming a ring around the Academy, facing outwards. It reminded him of a circle of standing stones.

Elsie and Danvers finished up back at the gates, and the last gargoyle squatted to one side of the opening just as the first gargoyle had squatted down on the other side. They were now flanking the gates, like a pair of extremely gothic sculptures.

Elsie stepped back a few paces. Everyone was watching her now. The slave-girls had formed a wide-eyed knot of spectators just inside the gates, and the heads of the gargoyles – for all that they were blind – were turned towards her. 

Danvers realized, with a squirm, that he would have lots of questions to answer, even if this didn't turn into a riot. His apparently harmless sister was cavorting with demons – controlling demons. Would people start to see the resemblance between her and the little mother now? Had they seen it already and been too polite to say anything? And how far would that politeness extend, now that she was doing things like this?

Elsie said something to the gargoyles in a hissing, guttural language, and they turned their heads back to face straight ahead. After a moment, their grey skin paled and hardened, grew patches of lichen and a patina of soot, as though they had stood there for hundreds of years. They were turning to stone – all except the eye cavities, which retained a touch of motion and freshness. She wouldn't take away their awareness, he realized, not when they had lived so long without it. Perhaps that was mercy and cruelty at the same time.

"They'll stand guard here for five hundred years," she said, turning back to the slave-girls with a shy smile, as though she was proposing some new parlour-game for them all to play. "They'll perform the function of gargoyles, which is to ward away evil, so that this will always be a place of sanctuary for you and your children and your children's children. That's their penance. Their punishment will be to look on as the world goes by without them, watching other people dance and run around and kiss each other. They'll be aware of every second that passes, and they'll have five hundred years to think about what they did. I daresay they deserve worse, but this is the best I can do. I don't have it in me to burn and whip them, and I don't think you do either."

For a moment, the slave-girls said nothing. Danvers expected them – some of them, anyway – to protest that they did have it in them, and offer to be the first with the whip. But they just stood still and silent. Amazingly to Danvers, who couldn't take his eyes off Elsie, they had shifted their focus, and were now looking behind her. 

The worry that had been so mysteriously absent was bubbling to the surface now. A few anxious whispers prickled through the crowd. Then Miss Mary walked forwards and laid a hand on Elsie's arm. Danvers had been prepared to push her away, but the touch was gentle – even sisterly.

"I'd come in now, love, if I was you," Mary whispered. "We've attracted a bit of an audience."

Danvers looked behind him, with a stomach full of dread. Carts had frozen in the street outside. Even the horses seemed to be transfixed. Peddlers and pedestrians and newspaper-boys were standing in the middle of the street, staring at the new ring of gargoyles and their blindfolded mistress. Her disguise – if indeed it had ever fooled anyone – was useless now.